Holcim and Lafarge in Spanish cartel probe
14 April 2015
An ongoing investigation by Spanish competition authorities into a cement and concrete cartel is now including four more companies, including Lafarge and Holcim’s Spanish subsidiaries.
La Comisión Nacional de Mercados y Competencia (CNMC) said this week that it was continuing to look into the markets for cement, concrete and related products, and was now taking in four further companies for possible anti-competitive practices – Materiales y Hormigones SL, Lafarge Cementos SA, Holcim España SA and Hormibusa SL.
In December 2014, the CNMC began disciplinary proceedings against Betón Catalán SA, Cementos Molins Industrial SA, Promotora Mediterránea 2 SA, Hanson Hispania SA, Cemex España Operaciones SLU, Tenesiver SL, Comercial Arroyo Construcción SA, Hormigones Giral SA, Cementos Portland Valderrivas SA and Cementos Lemona SA.
The CNMC said that during the investigation, access to information had led it to consider there were reasonable grounds for the inclusion of the four additional companies as it looked into behaviour regarding agreements and/or exchanges of information, and/or combined pricing practices and/or other trading conditions, and possible market sharing in cement, concrete and related products. It said this could mean a breach of Article 1 of the Spanish Competition Act (Ley de Defensa de la Competencia – LDC).
